Aster
by plumbloom
Summary: A/U, some crossover content. No.6 is destroyed and recreated - but in whose image? Shion, marked as one of the 'elite' by his immunity, struggles to find traces of Nezumi in the slums, and finds more than he had bargained for...
1. 1

_There is no other immortality: _

_in the cold spring, the purple violets open. _

_And yet, the heart is black, _

_there is its violence frankly exposed. _

_Or is it not the heart at the center _

_but some other word? _

- from "Hyacinth", L.G.

* * *

><p>The health office was cold and ill-lit. It was designed for the comfort of the patients, since the automatons which staffed the building were indifferent to the visible spectrum of light, but Shion remembered the glare of bright lights from his childhood checkups, and the cheerful countenance of the nurses; in contrast, the shadowplay struck him as something illicit or dirty. The movements of the doctor-automaton were barely visible in the half-light, but occasionally its skin would gleam, bringing him out of his reverie; the touch of its appendages were icy, and raised goosebumps on the exposed parts of his body. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, trying not to let his thoughts wander too far lest he begin to sweat or his heartbeat pick up.<p>

"You're doing quite well, sir." Its voice was programmed to be soothing, but the underlying hum of electronic gears, soft as it was, still disquieted Shion. "You have not been ill all this past year, is that correct?"

_Not physically._ "Yes."

"Nothing less is expected from one with your superior genetic makeup." There were more whirring noises and a final soft_ ping_ as the automaton updated its own information and sent it off to the database. "You have been cleared for travel outside of Midas."

Shion sat up slowly. One of the attending automatons brought him his clothing and helped him dress. As he pulled on his boots, the doctor-automaton, which had politely stationed itself against a wall and reduced its power consumption while he prepared to leave, straightened up again, its ocular implants glowing.

"I have received a message from the Bureau of Foreign Travel," it explained, in a passing fair imitation of an apologetic tone. "Sir, they are requesting a confirmation of your stated itinerary."

"Patch me through to someone flesh, please."

The holograph image projected from the doctor-automaton's speech module was sub-par, but it would do. The man on the other end of the line – a brunette – looked startled when the connection was established, and immediately straightened up, his expression one of deep chagrin. Shion waved off the stuttered apology that he suspected was coming. "You needed confirmation from me?"

"Sir, I – " The man looked like he wanted to disappear into his console. "It was a routine request from the computer, sir. I only put it through. I deeply apologize – "

"There's no need for apologies." Shion hoped his tone would put the man at ease, but it only seemed to make him more stricken. "I wanted to save all of us the time and energy of a drawn-out exchange. What seems to be the issue?" When the man consulted his screen and then hesitated, Shion gestured for him to continue.

"It says further explanation of your intent is being requested."

"As I stated in my original application, I have purchased a number of artifacts that I would like to examine before they are brought into Midas. Moreover, since none of the dealers have been able to bring me satisfactory individuals, I intend to visit a number of them in person, to see if their stock is perhaps better at the source." He finished lacing up his boot and paused, looking up again.

Taking comfort in the chance to interact with the technology at his disposal, the man was absorbed in his console. When Shion fell silent, he confirmed, "Yes, sir. I have all of your documentation here."

"And the problem is...?"

"It's quite dangerous this time of year, sir. Those in the lower parts of No. 6 have no respect for an elite such as yourself. The Mother is concerned for your safety. Perhaps, if you went to Midas' border, you could accomplish your objectives, and still remain within her protection."

"With all due honor to our Mother, this is a trip which I have been delaying for a year now. I intend to go. I will bring a guard-force with me."

The man was typing furiously to update the file. "Automatons will not be adequate – "

"And two flesh guards as well."

There was a soft series of clicks from over the connection, and finally the man seemed to relax. "That seems to take care of it, sir. Provided the flesh companions are assigned to you."

"Fine. Thank you." The connection was dissolved, and Shion felt the darkness of the examination room close in upon him again. He rose and took his leave, and whether its programming had been thrown off by Shion's unusual request, or whether it was simply an old model, the automaton did not bother to wish him farewell.

* * *

><p>Outside it was overcast, a chill in the air. As he stepped into the private car which would conduct him to his estate, his thoughts drifted idly back to the man he had spoken with via hologram. An utterly nondescript sort of person, a cast-off of society, and plainly terrified of him. He had not even bothered to learn the man's name, and yet –<p>

It was probably the only human interaction he would have all week.

Shion caught his reflection in tinted glass of the window and studied it dispassionately. Most of the elite preferred to keep their light hair long, thereby symbollicaly enhancing their perceived status, but Shion's was cropped an inch or so above the nape of his neck. Self-consciously he touched the place on his cheek where the serpentine scar used to mark him. It was all but faded now, a shallow, colorless ridge in its place. This was by government mandate, but his eyes had reverted back to their old color on their own. He was a clumsy patchwork of his old and new selves, and he found it intolerable.

_You've become the thing you swore you'd never become._

A pampered zoo animal.

"I haven't," he protested hollowly, to no one. "I'm not."

His memories mocked him._ Oh yes, you have._

Everyone he'd known had died or disappeared on the Day of Sorrow, more than a year past. Those with a natural genetic immunity – the so-called 'elite' – had merely suffered, strange wounds twisting around their bodies, their hair turning silver or white, grey or blond; but the others had died. A great number of people had died.

A light rain began to fall, and it seemed as if tears were tracing their way down Shion's reflected countenance. He rested his head on the window and closed his eyes.

* * *

><p><em>"Shion. Don't do it." Nezumi's voice was like so much static forcing its way through a radio broadcast. Meanwhile the security guard he'd shot blubbered for his life at the muzzle of Shion's gun, mucus and saliva and tears mingling over the lower half of his face. The gunshots which had hit Nezumi bloomed over and over again in Shion's narrowed and dimmed field of vision. The rage was like poison; it begged to be purged...<em>

_"Shion!"_

_He fired. _

_When he came to his senses, seconds later, the stench of blood was unbearable. It coated his fingers, his sleeve, his legs. His gaze wavered and then focused on the security guard, a mess of blood and guts. For a moment he thought he would be sick; he thought he would scream, but the moment passed and then he felt curiously empty and light._

_Then the corpse in front of him turned black and collapsed in on itself._

_For a moment he thought he was still possessed with the terrifying demon of revenge, but the gun he held was still. He let his gun hand drop to his side, confused. The security guard's body was rotting in front of his eyes. He risked a glance at the other guards, who moments before had been moaning and writhing on the floor, and saw how terribly still and black they were._

_No._

_Nezumi was babbling something incoherent, and he was – Shion could not have imagined it – he was weeping, struggling to rise on his wounded leg. Something about fault and guilt and regret, but Shion felt strangely calm. Slowly he turned to face the other boy, and brought his gun to bear._

_"Get out of here."_

_The weeping stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Tears shone dully on his dirty cheeks, but Nezumi did not speak as his gaze met Shion's. The expression of betrayal; of raw, naked emotion that Nezumi had guarded so well for so long, laid bare on his sweat- and blood-stained face was more than Shion thought he could bear, but that moment passed, too, and his hand did not waver. _

_"Leave. Now. It's have to get out."_

_"I won't..."_

_Won't what? Shion did not give him enough time to finish. He leveled the gun more carefully and tightened his grip on the trigger._

_"I will."_

_Nezumi flinched as if he had been struck. It could not have been very long – a handful of seconds, a dozen at best – but it felt as if the interval stretched over the entire amount of time they had known one another, and when Shion blinked sweat from his eyes, Nezumi's face had changed. For a moment fear gripped Shion's heart in its icy fist as he mistook the expression for the horror of a victim of the parasite bees, and he thought his legs would fail him. Then Nezumi rose on his good leg, holding Shion's gaze, and he breathed again. But the eyes that Nezumi turned toward him then – those he could never forget._

_There was no hate, no disappointment, no anger there. Just a simple, curious, flat_ nothing_. Pitiless and indifferent as the clouds that herald a thunderstorm, Nezumi's countenance was the very picture of deadened calm. It was not as if they had become strangers, or enemies. It was as if he had ceased to see Shion standing there; as if his existence had simply gone out like a guttering candle in a night which stretches on endlessly toward oblivion. Slowly, very slowly, he turned his back on Shion and limped toward the door. _

_He knew it then. That he would never see Nezumi again._

_Those seconds before Nezumi disappeared from his sight forever were the most painful of his young life. Or so he had thought, but when he recalled the event it was not that moment, but the memory of how Nezumi's face had changed in the sights of his gun that truly agonized him; that woke him screaming from his sleep in the night, that possessed him to send queries with Nezumi's specifications to every dealer he knew, the licensed and illicit, holding on to the spare hope that he would find him one day again. He had been presented with dozens of boys (and some girls too), raven-haired, grey-eyed, sullen, lanky. They regarded him suspiciously, or hopefully, lustfully or indifferently, but none of them were Nezumi. _

_His mother had died on the Day of Sorrow. Identifying corpses had been difficult, but Shion recognized her earrings, her scarf, her apron. She was the only woman in her bakery shop at the time. He burned her body on the terrace, watching the smoke rise and join the choking clouds that had gathered over No. 6. Everywhere people were burning their dead, looting, and raping. Some lived, but many more died. He never did find out what happened to Inukashi and Rikiga. If they had not perished, they could have escaped, but to where Shion could not imagine. The reconstruction effort happened relatively quickly after the Day of Sorrow, and the slums outside No. 6 had already been reduced to rubble in the first cleansing – they burned quickly, and the purged lands were incorporated into the outer ring of the city, dubbed Ceres for the fields that were plowed there among the ruins. _

_And Safu..._

Shion was startled out of his reverie as the car swerved sharply, a deviation from its normal course. Looking through the front windshield, he could see no reason for the aberration, but his view was occluded by the falling rain. He hit the override panel, and it skidded to a stop on the side of the road.

The highway was eerily quiet and devoid of cars. Shion opened his door and stepped out, straining to see through the rain.

There, in the middle of the road, was a dog. The car would have automatically detected its presence and re-routed to avoid it. Shion knelt and whistled, but the dog did not move. Its head faced toward him, but he could make out nothing else in the gloom. He whistled again, and clapped his hands together, trying to make himself heard over the sound of the rain. The stillness of the dog on the rainy road in the night struck him as uncanny, and for a moment a boy's irrational fear gripped him.

Finally it lowered its head and loped off into the gathering dusk, leaving Shion with rain streaming down his face and uncertainty weighing heavy on his heart. In the distance, the Moon Drop sounded mournfully, and another howl – the dog's? – joined its cry.

Steeling himself for the rest of the lonely drive home, Shion got back into the car and let it pull him further into the black heart of the night.


	2. 2

_My bands of silk and miniver_  
><em>Momently grew heavier;<em>  
><em>The black gauze was beggarly thin;<em>  
><em>The ermine muffled mouth and chin;<em>  
><em>I could not suck the moonlight in.<em>

_Harlequin in lozenges_  
><em>Of love and hate, I walked in these<em>  
><em>Striped and ragged rigmaroles;<em>  
><em>Along the pavement my footsoles<em>  
><em>Trod warily on living coals.<em>  
>from "Full Moon", E. Wylie<p>

* * *

><p>The unearthly crying wound its way through the darkening streets, waking him almost instantly. He had slept badly, curled into a half-circle around a busted heater that he'd managed to tweak into running at partial capacity before he lay down. By now it had gone cold and still, a useless hunk of metal. One hand, bandaged against the weather, curled around the knife in his cowl.<p>

Again the howl rose, not unlike the sound of aircraft streaking overhead, and Nezumi's upper lip curled. Someone clapped a hand on his shoulder and he rolled away nimbly, bringing his knife to bear.

"No rest for the weary," said the man attached to the hand, and Nezumi recognized Big, the troupe's leader. Seemingly unpreturbed by the knife, his black eyes swept restlessly back and forth as he aimed a foot at another of the sleeping figures. "Up and out. If it's bad, they will come."

The other strolling players were getting to their feet as well, cursing and groaning and gathering their meager possessions. None bothered to question Big; they knew well as he did that when the storms came, so did the snatchers, the looters, the murderers. In Ceres, beyond the gate, only a tenuous, ill-defined sense of order held sway, enforced by a ragtag band of unlucky fleshies whose preferred assignments in Midas had been taken over by automatons. Some of the pol in Ceres were criminals outright: embezzelers or drug-easers who'd bene caught while in the ranks and assigned to a post in Ceres as reprimand. When the weather got bad at night, they hunkered down in their precinct office, switched on the holograph, and turned a blind eye.

The troupe were spending the night - really, the late day into the evening, for that was when they slept - in a disused alley between two abandoned buildings, for the weather had been fair, if cold, when they lay down. Since then the wind had picked up; Nezumi shrugged the hood of his cowl over his ears to warm them. Big was consulting his transmitter, a clunky old model. "We're still on," he announced. "They'll throw together some extra security and hope people feel safer in the theater than they do at home."

"Fat chance," whined Grift, the youngest of the strolling players, a skin-and-bones, weasel-faced kid. "We're not gonna get any ease-money."

"Quit complaining. The place still has to pay." Asya looped an arm over Harra's shoulder; the stronger of the conjoined twins wore a blank expression as she knelt to gather her sister in her arms, straining around the place where they were attached at the shoulder. Grotesque a spectacle as they made, they were one of Big's most profitable attractions, and Asya, at least, knew it. Big did not demur when she seemed to bandy her authority about, but it turned Nezumi's stomach.

Silently he turned away and faced toward the street, glancing upward. The clouds were pale and voluminous, and when the wind ceased to blow the alley seemed too still for this time of night; not a rat, not a dog, bestirred themselves. A night for secrets; a night for death.

There were eight of them all counted, and even the more boisterous and chatty among them were quiet as they walked the empty streets. It was not yet raining over Ceres, but the distant glow of Midas was dimmed. Nezumi kept its brilliance in the corner of his eye, but he disliked looking at it straight-on. The dazzling glare, he knew, would seep into his eyes and draw him in and back, forcing him to remember.

The theater was not far. A few haggard-looking prostitutes gestured to them as they walked by, offering shelter and company for the night. It was a profession Nezumi had considered in the first months after the Day of Sorrow - or rather, had been too apathetic not to consider - until Big happened upon him, starving and half-conscious in one of the many new buildings left empty after the shabby reconstruction of Ceres, and recognized him for the actor who had been Eve. Self-interest, not compassion, motivated Big to take Nezumi in, nurse him, convince him to join his troupe.

At the time Nezumi had consented without thinking, but as time wore on and the numbing haze surrounding him seemed to weaken and fade, he saw that he owed much to Big. The man was somewhat simple and definitely money-hungry, but reasonable, and never cruel. He had 'rescued' Grift in much the same way after the boy nearly had his throat opened from ear to ear for conning the wrong man; and it was whispered that Asya and Harra had been born, raised, and held in a whorehouse before Big stumbled upon them.

Not that much mattered to Nezumi beyond the knowledge of the debt he owed to Big. It was unlike the one he had owed to...the one he had owed before; but some stubbornness, it seemed, was still in him, and he was damned if he was going to be beholden to anyone.

That didn't mean he felt a shred of attachment to anyone else in the troupe. Grift had a way of trailing after him, and Nezumi ignored it passively when he could, though it must be admitted that he often couldn't, and would drive the boy away with a cold word. He rolled an eye over the rest of them - the two-sexed Comsen, who carried Shazad, the 'Living Torso,' and Hebi, with whom he performed the knife-act, and felt nothing perceptible shift beyond the bounds of his consciousness. They were strangers to him.

The Moon Drop moaned her warning once more, thunder sounded far off over Midas, and Nezumi ran one finger down the blade of his knife, trying to quell a rising excitement.

* * *

><p>There was a comfort in the dinginess of the dressing room, a familiarity from his former life, though it was no tragic heroine's role that he would play, and no faithful fans who would attend all his performances, sighing in feigned ecstasy over his every gesture. Big had suggested it to him at first, that he reprise both the persona of Eve and the stage-roles Eve had performed, but Nezumi flatly refused.<p>

He was unable to touch the place inside himself from which he had once drawn all the pathos of the great lost plays; in no part of his life did what was called the 'sublime' make itself known, and the idea had become repugnant to him. The only time he felt a glimmer of desire for those times was when he thought of a particular face, a particular voice...and to dwell upon those times was more dangerous than drinking lethe; it was a well with no bottom, a darkness which threatened to swallow him up forever. Nezumi shook his head to clear it.

Big had disappeared to negotiate last-minute details with the manager, and they each slid out of their clothes, unmindful of one another except to the extent where help was required. Asya ordered her sister in simple, slow words as they donned their costume, a combined effort; a scantily clad Comsen combed and curled Shazad's whiskers.

Meanwhile Hebi shrugged off her shirt and sat backwards over a broken chair; Nezumi twisted open the jar of oil from her baggage and palmed it over the rough skin of her back. Big billed her as the Snake-lady, but the grey skin which covered her body in patches was in fact the relic of a childhood illness. When Nezumi rubbed the oil into her skin, it shone like sewer water. She twisted her head nearly all the way around to grin at him, displaying teeth filed to sharp points. "You gonna stay a man tonight, Rat?"

He shook his head. "No one cares if a man's in distress."

She stood in one fluid motion, continuing where he'd left off to rub the oil over her bare breasts. "No one wants to see a woman near-castrate a man, you mean."

"That might be part of it," he admitted, and took her seat. It was uncomfortable to think that he 'liked,' or had become accustomed to, the faces she made as she did his makeup, but certainly it amused him - the flicker of pink tongue across brittle tooth-point; the smell of perfumed oil rising from the grey scales that covered half of her face and rose into her scalp, making her half-bald.

He suspected, both from her teeth and her flexibility (which was too outrageous a combination with her skin to be a natural trait) that she had been taken for a pet after the Day of Sorrow, but he had never asked. Even if he had cared to ask, it would have been impossible; to speak of such a thing to a person's face was taboo. Only Big could have known; and Big did not tell.

Hebi covered his face and neck in pale powder, painted elegantly arching eyebrows, pale blushing cheeks, a scarlet slash for his mouth. She loosed and combed his hair until it lay in a shining sheet across his neck, and then stepped back to admire her handiwork. A shadow passed over her eyes, and she looked away, pretending to take stock of the others. "The first act will go on soon."

Her jealousy was palpable, and tasted bitter on his tongue. He rose. "I'll go change."

* * *

><p>Back flat against the gaudily painted wooden board which the theater had provided, Nezumi suppressed a shiver. The place had no insulation to speak of, and now that the rain had begun, he was cold in the gauzy robe he wore. Gilded bracelets and anklets rang softly as he shifted from foot to foot.<p>

Hebi was still going through the motions of her individual part of the act; casually she tossed a knife into the air, leapt up, and caught it between her teeth. A ragged round of applause rose from the small audience, and Nezumi heard Grift's muttered curses from the wings, complaining about the likely lack of ease-money. Now the fun would begin.

"I caught my husband with this slut twice before," Hebi declared, using the tip of her longest throwing-knife to indicate Nezumi. "He coveted her beauty, and spurned me for my deformity. Twice I punished her - show them, whore!"

Stiff fingers found the clasps on his robes, hidden behind the embroidery, and pulled them open. His scarred and ruined body presented strategically for all to see, his chest and groin cleverly covered by the remaining wisps of the robe, Nezumi knew from his reflection in the mirrors which ringed the pit of the stage that he made a spectacle, and one more thing he knew - though his face was that of a beautiful woman, his body was ravaged by scars, unrecognizable even to himself. He bowed his head in mock shame, though he did not have to try over-hard to pretend. There were low murmurs and several cries of dismay from the audience.

"Thrice I cannot forgive," Hebi snarled as Nezumi re-covered himself and resumed his position in front of the board. "My husband I have sent forth into neverending darkness, and tonight this wench joins him in hell!"

This was the moment in the act when their eyes locked and, as countless times before, Nezumi could not read her expression. His body fraught with tension, he felt hypnotized in her gaze. Though a detached part of him knew he could evade if she threw with the intent to hit him, when he imagined the outpouring of blood and the pain which would rack his body like a fever, he felt no desire to protect himself. There was a part of him, no small part, that thrilled when this happened. Playing with death was one of the last things that could truly make him feel alive.

Hebi stepped back and drew the first knife, holding it in a graceful arc over her own head. Just perceptibly, she grinned at Nezumi, and he relaxed, partly from relief and partly from disappointment. Then her face hardened into the mask of the woman scorned, and she wailed a banshee-like shriek as she let the knife fly.

A noise like a hollow chime sounded, and white light exploded behind Nezumi's eyes as pain blossomed on the right side of his body. As he sank to the floor, the terrified cries of the audience welling up around him, he did not attempt to suppress a smile.


End file.
